He set up the cones, called the council to let them know he’d be tearing up the edge of the lane, and got the spade from the van. The rain started again—not hard, just a persistent, horizontal drizzle that found the gap between his hood and his collar.
The lane to Mrs. Delaney’s was a narrow ribbon of tarmac that had been patched so many times it looked like a quilt. He parked the van, pulled on his rubber gloves, and lifted the manhole cover. The smell hit him first—that particular Meath perfume of silage runoff, bog water, and something that had once been a Sunday roast. blocked drains meath
He fed the rods down, feeling for the block. This was the part Fiachra never understood. Why don’t you just use the jetter, Da? he’d say. The jetter was a powerful hose with a nozzle that could blast through anything. But Eamonn preferred the rods. Because the rods told you a story. He set up the cones, called the council
He found the break in the pipe—a cracked collar where a hawthorn root had forced its way through, thirsty for the water that ran from Mrs. Delaney’s washing machine. He replaced the broken section with a new piece of PVC, backfilled the hole with gravel, and smoothed the tarmac over the top. Delaney’s was a narrow ribbon of tarmac that
And as he drove home, past the flooded fields and the drystone walls, he knew that some blockages weren’t just about waste. They were about what got left behind. And in County Meath, even the drains had a history worth saving.